I read 81 books this year, mostly thanks to an aggressive ARC schedule and audiobooks. The list here are 18 books which I read this year that I loved, but weren’t necessarily published in 2018. Some are from 2016, one comes out in January 2019, and one collection of manga had been published back in 1972.
The books are in alphabetical order. Any book marked with an * means that it was featured in the 2018 Bookish Hype Train Post.
- Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly (2016)
- Sleek and sexy, this one made me cry on an airplane, a must-read for fans of queer secondary world fiction
- The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang (2017)
- family tension brought to you by twins on the opposite ends of everything in a really cool silkpunk world
- Bright Ruin by Vic James (2018)
- I wept over how perfect this ending was, just short of overwhelming
- The Changeling by Victor LaValle (2017)
- Family-driven horror and a great presentation of New York City
- Devilman: The Classic Collection 1 by Go Nagai (1972)
- This collection excellently summarizes my taste in anime, probably because it inspired most of it
- Girls Made of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan (2018)
- Full of heart and a fierce survivor spirit, this Malaysian-inspired fantasy hits all the right notes in presenting the full scope of female relationships
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2016)
- Required reading and this important work took me too long to read
- Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (2018)
- Speculative, literary horror which left me snuggled in terror between so many lines of beautiful prose
- Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen (2019)
- A father jumps across time and space to protect his two families, for fans of Doctor Who and crying
- To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo (2018)
- A murdery Little Mermaid retelling I didn’t know I needed
- Love, Hate, and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed (2018)*
- I cheered for Maya until the very end, another very important read
- The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (2018)
- Violent, raw, but enthralling, a must-read for grimdark fans
- The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang (2017)
- For fans of focused stories about angry, grieving protagonists fighting magic and monsters
- Toxic by Lydia Kang (2018)
- Sentient space ships goes rogue, a must for fans of Alien and space exploration thrillers
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth J. Dickinson (2016)
- A war story focused on the monetary machinations behind the scenes, featuring a hella smart protagonist
- An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard (2017)
- A very New York, very intense saga about magical families vying for supremacy and one woman on a mission to tear it all down
- Vengeful by V.E. Schwab (September 2018)*
- The road to publishing this one had been such a wild ride. It is dangerous, deadly, and the stakes ramp up to 1000
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou (2018)
- A chronological overview of the entire Theranos debacle, which I was obsessed with
What are some of your favorite reads?
Happy reading,
Jo
Jo Writes Fantasy 